In a fascinating new story, the New York Timesreports thata growing group of people identify themselves as “digisexuals” — a provocative term for people who are attracted to robots and artificial intelligences, rather than humans with flesh bodies and biological mind.

Amazon workers are now wearing safety belts to prevent the robots that prowl the tech giant's cavernous warehouses from killing them.

The Robotic Tech Vest, which was rolled out over the course of the last year to over 25 locations, appears to be an electric utility belt attached to a pair of suspenders, reports TechCrunch, but it has built-in sensors that alert robots of a human's presence.

The belts are designed to work in coordinated fashion with the robots' obstacle detection systems, according to TechCrunch.

In a fascinating new story, the New York Timesreports thata growing group of people identify themselves as “digisexuals” — a provocative term for people who are attracted to robots and artificial intelligences, rather than humans with flesh bodies and biological mind.

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The term would imply that they are attracted to fingers, rather than robots.

People have been getting killed by defective safety equipment, electronic or otherwise, for many decades. Why would we stop now?

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I don't know what percentage of accidents that would include defective equipment but I would also hazard to guess that there is a generous percentage of accidents of all sorts simply because of human error (stupidity, lack of proper training, lack of awareness, lack of sense, absent-mindedness, under the influence of something, etc)...

Killer robots are a 'grave threat to humanity' and should be banned, the world's largest gathering of scientists was told.

Scientists and human rights campaigners told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington DC lethal droids able to select targets without human help represent the 'third revolution' in warfare after gun powder and nuclear weapons.

Just as international agreements greatly restricted the use of landmines, similar international agreements should be used to prevent robotic killers becoming established.

Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch, co-ordinator of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots said: 'Public sentiment is hardening against the prospect of fully autonomous weapons.

'Bold political leadership is needed for a new treaty to preemptively ban these weapons systems.'

Support for a ban comes from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has called lethal autonomous weapons systems 'politically unacceptable and morally repugnant'.

Are there any specific plans by any military or defence company to build lethal robots that select their own targets?

Some have argued for a few years that US military drones are a harbinger of this age of killer robots. But I disagree. They have similar involvement from people in the use of their weapons systems as do manned strike aircraft. Arguably decisions are better made with the use of drones, because the decision to fire is not made by someone in fear of their own life, as it is with a manned aircraft, and they are thus able to be more dispassionate.

A pilot in a plane is not really able to gain an appreciation of the situation on the ground. Travelling over a battlefield at several hundred feet and several hundred knots does not permit you to take a lot in. Instead, aircrews rely on what they are seeing in video monitors. Drone operators are better able to consider what they are looking at on the ground with larger, higher-definition video monitors and in a state of relative calm.

It is something of a philosophical question as to just what an autonomous killing machine is if you maintain we do not already have them. All types of guided missiles and bombs are under robotic control once they are fired, and seek out their target by computer. Guided missiles have existed since at least the Second World War. The German V1 and V2 missiles had autonomous guidance which employed methods from before the age of electronic digital computers.

We can even look back to more primitive weapons and arguably see the same principle in place. A landmine (or even a sea mine) is a device that goes off automatically in response to some event, such as a switch being depressed, or a wire being tripped. It is a fair point, however, that landmines were banned by international treaty. But even before the invention of explosives, booby traps existed.

Having machines able to do all fighting might make war seem less risky for belligerents, which would be a bad thing. Unless, of course, your enemy has an equal or greater capability. It was once thought that nuclear weapons would make nations who had them, like the US, able to dominate the globe. On the other hand, they made it very difficult to make a war winnable, and so no two nuclear powers have yet gone to war with one another.